It’s hard to believe that Venom #260 was originally scheduled to come out on the second week of Queen in Black alongside Queen in Black: Defenders of Light and Dark #1 and Queen in Black: Hela #1. I’d already questioned the placement of Defenders of Light and Dark’s first issue given that it jumps ahead in the event to the first direct confrontation with both Hela and Knull (which still hasn’t happened in the main book after two issues), but the idea that this issue, which takes place explicitly after the final page cliffhanger of Queen in Black #2 would have come out three weeks before that issue is a baffling move, though not a surprising one. Unless Venom #260 had some changes to the art/script to incorporate its release the week after the second issue of the main book where Dylan Brock finds himself captured by Hela’s Symbiote Intelligence (the Kree Supreme Intelligence with a Symbiote), it would have been a major spoiler. At least with Defenders of Light and Dark, their attacks on Hela and Knull are set up in the first issue of the main book – and happen away from Earth. If the final page of the second issue is actually meant to hit hard, then giving it away weeks ahead of time would have been a bad move.
Instead, thanks to the delays, Venom #260 is able to use that final page as the springboard for its story by having Dylan in the grips of the Symbiote Intelligence and leading into a character-driven flashback issue. If we didn’t have the original release schedule, you’d think that this was always the plan. As it is, it’s perfect placement for this issue, letting the impact of the final page linger a bit over the week and, then, giving a bit of a followup that doesn’t resolve anything, while enabling a deeper look at Dylan. The second issue of Queen in Black suddenly makes him a more important character than he initially seemed in the first issue, so an immediate followup into him is needed for anyone unfamiliar with him who happen to be checking out this event because it’s a Marvel event.
There are two sides contributing to Queen in Black: Symbiotes and Asgardians. While this is primarily a Symbiote event coming out of Al Ewing’s long-running Venom work (and various ancillary titles), it also rubs against his work on Thor. This week does a great job of delivering on both of those sides with tie-ins that lean hard into their respective areas of the Marvel Universe. If you’ve come into the event from either side, this is the week that provides a heavy dose of context on the other.
As I’m decidedly on the Asgardian side of things, it was actually the announcement of the two seemingly connected one-shots, Queen in Black: Hela #1 and Queen in Black: Thor #1 that initially piqued my interest in this event. Until that moment, I’d mostly eye-rolled the whole thing as a Symbiote event that happened to be using Hela. But, I should have known that it would actively tie-in to Mortal Thor given that, historically, Al Ewing is always keen to fold whichever ongoings he’s writing into current events, particularly the ones that he’s heading up. It seems part team player, part marketing mind, and I can’t fault him either. While interested, I was also wary because the story that he’s telling in Immortal Thor and Mortal Thor seems so insular and of its own piece that tying into this Symbiote event is an unnecessary distraction. I guess that’s why it’s happening in these one-shots; during Immortal Thor, Ewing used the annual event at the time and the conceit of ‘giant-size’ issues to add on a couple of one-shot stories to add onto the larger story. That’s what Queen in Black: Thor #1 is.
It’s also a peculiar issue. Taking place between pages 9 and 10 of Mortal Thor #9, it firmly places Queen in Black within the continuity of that title about five months ago for us. Split between Beta Ray Bill’s fight with Tyr as shown in Queen in Black: Defenders of Light and Dark #1 (and possibly continued in issue 2 along with some future issue of the main series) and Sigurd Jarlson’s confrontation with Hela as New York is under siege by her invading Symbiotes, it’s not quite essential reading for the Asgardian side of things. Yet, there are enough crucial details, particularly some future teases to make it worthwhile. Both this and the Hela one-shot follow the epigraph page and narration by Loki like Immortal Thor and Mortal Thor do placing them firmly within the context of that run. Based on the release schedule, these are the sole Asgardian tie-ins.
What proved more interesting is the Bill/Tyr half of the issue. Back in Immortal Thor #25 when Skurge destroyed the Black Bridge connecting Asgard to Utgard, as it was tied to the Bifrost by Loki’s magic, that bridge was also destroyed and, more than that, its destruction shattered the connection between Asgard and Midgard (Earth). This meant that everything that indicated the Asgardians are more than Norse mythology, including Thor being an Avenger or Asgard taking up residence in Oklahoma, was erased from the collective memory. One of the more interesting details was that this meant, somehow, Beta Ray Bill replaced Thor as the hammer-wielding founding member of the Avengers. While Bill has appeared since that change in Storm and One World Under Doom, the nature of this replacement hasn’t been explored in any sort of depth – especially not by Ewing.
That’s been the big missing piece of this story as it seems like something that Ewing would have wanted to pick up on and use as part of his ongoing story in Mortal Thor. Instead, his first use of Bill since the change was this event where it’s casually revealed that Bill is the only one who remembers everything Asgardian and his fellow heroes think he’s a little off as result. What becomes quickly apparent in this issue is that there isn’t actually much more to the situation than that. While the fight/debate between Bill and Tyr here is interesting, very little of it has to do with Bill’s status as Thor’s replacement in Earth’s history.
Instead, it’s more a bookend to the fight from Hela #1 where Tyr and Hela fight against Red Norvell, another replacement Thor, and he’s ultimately sacrificed as payment to Mephisto. Another attempt to subdue a replacement Thor, this time by arguing that Bill should align himself with them and help to restore to Asgard. It’s an intriguing position, that Bill owes Earth little and that Hela’s plan to sacrifice that planet to gain the power to conquer Asgard and undo the magic that disconnected it from Earth. However, Bill is, obviously, too noble to fall for such a ploy. Perhaps this is the beginning of Beta Ray Bill’s involvement in Ewing’s Thor run; if not, it seems like an area that could have been explored in more depth. Together with the Sigurd portion, the issue feels very much grafted onto the Thor run – but does expand on scenes from elsewhere in the Queen in Black event.
Further to the feeling of not quite fitting alongside Mortal Thor is that Sergio Dávila doesn’t quite fit with the visual style of that book. His recent work on What If...? Thor #1 showed him adept at Asgardian fare and his work here on the Bill/Tyr fight is energetic; his overly wrought line work doesn’t have the otherworldly feel that is more at home in Mortal Thor. However, it’s a style that fits the Queen in Black event, reinforcing the feeling that this is more at home there than incorporated in Mortal Thor. Which is fine given that it is explicitly a tie-in to that event and should feel part of it; there’s a weird balance with tie-ins to ongoings that they have to serve two masters and there’s a reason why this is a one-shot that’s retroactively forced in between the pages of Mortal Thor than a regular issue. Queen in Black has a passing relationship with Ewing’s Thor work and it’s acknowledged here – but this is decidedly a Symbiote event.
Venom #260 is the sort of tie-in that firmly states that, flipping the script a bit on the ratio of event-to-ongoing in the issue. Where Queen in Black: Thor #1 works to incorporate Sigurd and feel like it actually connects to Mortal Thor, this issue does the reverse by doing its best to convince you that it actually matters in the context of Queen in Black while devoting the bulk of the issue to Dylan Brock’s ongoing story with his father. Captured by the Symbiote Intelligence, Dylan’s mind is probed and he remembers an encounter from months previous where, when seemingly dying at the hands of Carnage, Dylan is taken to the Black Engine and confronts a future version of his father at the height of his King in Black powers. What ensues is a father/son discussion that’s all about playing with the disconnect between the present and future. While I haven’t been a regular reader of Ewing’s Venom work, I know it’s revolved around time travel and different incarnations of Eddie Brock at different points in time quite a bit.
Where Queen in Black: Thor felt like it was throwing the likes of me a bone to make it feel like this event related in some way to what interests me, this is very much another issue of Venom that happens to use Queen in Black as a framing device. That’s what also makes it a more effective tie-in: if Dylan Brock is to matter to this story, then people like me who are not regular Symbiote book readers need some reason to care. This issue gives necessary context to at least have some idea who this kid is and how he fits into all of this Symbiote garbage. There’s also a tragic element baked into the issue as, with the glimpses of the (possible) future, we know that stopping Hela and Knull in this story doesn’t mean all that much. That nothing is set in stone is the sole bit of hope that maybe Dylan can avert the teased Symbiote tyranny of his father. It’s a bit of a primer on the broader ideas at work filtered through a single character that, after Queen in Black #2, suddenly seems central to the event.
I don’t know if this was Venom #260 as always planned and the delay in its release is a lucky occurrence or not – it undoubtedly works quite well here. Paired with Queen in Black: Thor #1, the third week of Queen in Black gives a bit of both sides of the event, continuing the strong run of well-scheduled releases. That the event is working this well is remarkable after the shuffling of books, particularly when looking at the original schedule which reads as worse. Even better is that Venom #260 not only picks up on last week’s cliffhanger, it ends on its own that leads right into Queen in Black #3, which follows a week later, making this tie-in a perfect bridge.
Next: Queen in Black #3 and Queen in Black: Defenders of Light and Dark #2.
